Videogame Dev 101
by Goa1aso
Summary: An example of what not to do. Series of one-shots.
1. Chapter 1

**Videogame Dev 101**

 _ **If Kayaba was anything like today's game developers.**_

 **By Goa1aso**

 _-0-_

Everything seemed alright, at first glance. The game played just like how it did in beta. The not-so-subtle product placement present in beta was still there, even. (Coca-Cola drinks served at bars! Victoria's Secret lady's wear! Dove soap!)

However, one month into the game, the reality of the situation was grim.

"Out of the 800 beta-testers who joined the game, 700 have died?!"

"Yup," «The Rat» replied, with no trace of the usual cheerfulness in her tone. It was understandable really, as the two conversing were former beta-testers themselves. The topic of the conversation struck too close to home. "Besides the beta-testers, 3292 regular players have died as well."

Kirito inhaled sharply, at a loss for words. "T-that's almost half of the players already! In under a month! What the hell changed? What is killing so many players?"

"It's the dreaded «DBA». You and I were lucky to have been annoyed by some minor things and paid a premium price to remove these… abominations."

"D…B…A?"

" _Death by ads."_

 _-0-_

(Somewhere in Aincrad, as the two talked, another player died while fighting, falling victim to the abomination known as the «Fullscreen Ad»)

(Some say that they see ghosts of dead players, ranting about _talking ponies_ and _rainbows_ )

* * *

After clearing the 50th floor, the clearers were in uproar.

"Kayaba you cash-grabbing bastaaaard!"

"Was trapping us in this game not enough? Now you want us to pay even more?"

"I swear, I will find you. And I will kill you."

The cause of their uproar?

 _-0-_

 _Downloadable Content_

 _The next 25 levels require downloadable content that is not accessible at this time._

 _You will not be able to access this content unless if you purchase it._

 _Buy now for $100?_

 _[Yes] [No]_

(The clearers lost a good chunk of their forces that day due to a lack of a credit card attached to their account, as they were not old enough to have had owned one)

(Yes, that includes Kirito)

* * *

' _The past couple floors weren't too bad,'_ Kirito mused, as he climbed up the stairs towards the next floor after the 63rd boss fight. ' _It'd be nice if they kept up this trend.'_

 _-0-_

Of course, Fate was listening and was sorely tempted. However, the entity known as 'Akihiko Kayaba' beat it to the punchline.

 _-0-_

The 64th floor was a nightmare for the clearers. The floor itself was an interesting design, with towering castle walls and a vast countryside to explore. However, the problem was with the quests and their design.

The whole floor's lore was centered around an uprising. It wasn't a standard civil-war-type uprising though, it was more along the lines of 'cloak and dagger'.

Some players took to this like fish to water; solo players like Kirito and Argo completely destroyed the quest-line needed to access the floor's dungeon. However, the numbers of the main forces of the clearers were decimated by the floor, over half of them dying to _just the quest-line_.

Slow-moving tanks with heavy weaponry just wasn't suited for this shit.

 _-0-_

A lone tank stalked through the shadows of the dimly lit corridor, the torches on the walls barely illuminating the path in front of him. A pair of footsteps could barely be heard around the corner in front of him, as he hid in a shadow nearby.

The guard turned the corner and was suddenly ambushed, his neck broken before he had any time to react, his body slumping to the ground without a sound.

' _So far so good,'_ the tank sweated nervously, looking for a place to dispose of the body. (Yes, the bodies did not turn into polygons, only on this floor. Kayaba and his genius ideas.)

He took a step around a corner, corpse slung over his shoulder, and ran as fast as he could down the hallway, to the next safe zone, so that he could avoid the next guard patrol.

He wasn't fast enough. The next guard spotted him before he'd run 10 meters and sounded the alarm.

"NOOooooooo…!" the player sobbed, as the world around him faded to grayscale. Four words hung tauntingly in front of his eyes.

 _-0-_

 _Mission Failed._

 _ **You lose.**_

 _-0-_

His body burst suddenly into a shower of polygons.

 _-0-_

(' _Forced stealth? What a sadistic bastard, that Kayaba_ 'was Kirito's thoughts on the matter)

* * *

"Wait, wait wait. You're telling me that you bought that sword from a _vendor_ on the _FIRST FLOOR?!_ "

"Yeah, this sword looks so awesome doesn't it?"

"It's _EXCALIBUR_ for crying out loud! It'd better look awesome! WAIT, stop getting me side-tracked. This sword probably could kill anything in the game! Without upgrades!" Kirito ranted, his face getting redder and redder with every word. "What kind of shitty game dev puts an end-game weapon in the starter shop? Wait. How did you even buy it? How much did it cost?"

"It costed $1000… My mommy said I could buy whatever I wanted in this game!" the snot-nosed brat replied with a higher-than-thou smirk.

Kirito choked on air, blinking rapidly, trying to wrap his mind around the implications. "You know what? Screw it. Screw Kayaba and screw this game."

He turned around and walked away, proceeding to lock himself in an inn room and cry for the rest of the game.

 _-0-_

(Sword Art Online was cleared within the month, by a full raid of players geared with legendary items)

(Kirito stayed in his inn-room, refusing to come out, muttering something about 'pay to win' much to Klein's chagrin)


	2. Chapter 2

**Videogame Dev 101**

 _ **If Kayaba was any less competent at developing games.**_

 _ **(Also known as: Bugs that could've existed)**_

 **By Goa1aso**

 _-0-_

"Yeah, I was prepared for this, so I ordered some pizza. I should probably go and eat that now."

"Ah, okay. See you then…"

Klein opened his menu, swiping his hand up to scroll to the bottom. "Uh, noob question, but where's the log-out button?"

"It's right here… wait, why is the button blank?" Kirito responded, copying the other player's motions and hovering over the blank button. "Well, try pressing it, I guess. Maybe the text got removed on accident."

The older man complied with the suggestion, his avatar disappearing from the world of Sword Art Online.

Kirito sighed, rubbing his fingers through his hair. _'And here I thought that Kayaba was a competent developer. I guess even the best of us make mistakes time to time… but seriously, forgetting the text on a button? Talk about a newbie mistake.'_

 _-0-_

Kayaba searched frantically through his source code, trying to figure out just _how_ people were managing to log out of his _'Death Game'_ , or as it should've been called if everything had gone as planned.

He scoured through the 'Logout Button' code with a critical eye, noticing his mistake on the first few lines. He face-palmed immediately, slumping over his desk in despair.

' _My whole plan goes to shambles because of this? I want to die.'_

His problem?

 _-0-_

boolean logoutEnabled = false;

if (logoutEnabled = true) {

buttonText = "Log out of game";

}

buttonText = "";

 _-0-_

(Sword Art Online was hailed as the best game of the year a few months later, with some criticism towards the blank logout button)

(The game's creator, Akihiko Kayaba, refused to comment when asked for his thoughts on the award)

 _-0-_

 **Note: For those where the joke went over their heads, Google the difference between = and == in programming. Here's where I got inspiration from: 1mgur (d0t) com/a/lH8zTNj (replace dot with an actual period, 1 with i)**

 **Also, 'boolean' is just a type of variable that can be true or false.**

* * *

' _I swear, the beta wasn't as bad as this…'_ Kirito sighed mentally as he watched various monsters _slide_ past him, often passing through terrain and walls. He couldn't really say anything verbally to Klein who was by his side, as he was frozen mid-animation for the simple sword skill he was trying to teach.

Suddenly, he could move again, everything that slid past him _zooming_ back to their original positions, and he found himself in a different spot than he was just at, a solid 10 meters away from Klein now.

Klein looked on indifferently, noticing the 'rubber-banding' lag that his new acquaintance just experienced. "Damn, this game has bad netcode."

"You could say that again," Kirito grimaced. "I never had this happen in beta though…"

"It's probably 'cause of the sheer difference in scale. Going from 1,000 people to 10,000 is quite the jump, especially if Kayaba's still using the same server."

"Oh, huh. Never thought of that."

 _-0-_

(Not too far away from them, an unfortunate level 1 player 'rubber-banded' into a mob of boars, instantly shattering into a thousand polygons)

* * *

"Uh, what is going on?"

"…it seems that the boss is scared of us?"

Illfang the Kobold Lord – the first floor's boss – was an impressive specimen. It towered over the players, looking extremely savage and formidable. However, that effect was severely diminished with its current actions.

"It's just… moving back? Will it come attack us?"

"I don't know… anyone wanna try attacking?"

Yes, the boss was currently just edging away from the players. The cause was due to its faulty logic. It was supposed to charge at the players and attack, but its 'dodge' function was preventing it from doing so, overriding the programmed initial attack. Kayaba had added the dodging capabilities to the boss to make it harder to fight than in beta, but his implementation was so complex that it predicted all possible attacks that could come out, causing it to just simply move away from the players in order to avoid them all.

The players, not knowing what to do, looked at each-other and shrugged, charging forward at Illfang with a chorus of battle cries.

Its self-preservation tactics were too strong. No matter how fast or deadly the attack, the Kobold Lord just evaded, jumping all over the room and avoiding every player. Not a single drop of blood was shed for the next hour between both sides.

Nor the next.

Eventually, the raid party gave up, electing to trudge out of the room and back to town with tears of frustration.

 _-0-_

(The first floor was never cleared in the end, to the despair of all the players)

(Kayaba wordlessly soloed the boss with system-assist a few months later, cursing his own idea)

* * *

Argo sighed, reading yet another message about a 'log out bug'. It was the fourth such message, but they all pointed to the same thing: There was a way to crash the game and log out.

 _The Rat_ frowned. _'If something as simple as this would break the game, what does that say about Kayaba?'_

Deciding to investigate, she called the 'Fencer-san' that had asked her about a 'Secret log out location' earlier over for a quick meeting.

Asuna dropped what she was doing and rushed to the tavern that Argo was at immediately, practically bouncing up and down in anticipation.

After calming the excitable girl down, _The Rat_ told Asuna to make her menus visible to others, quickly running down the theory to her.

Upon selecting a blank inventory space as instructed, Asuna noticed that the 'Delete Item' button was still useable, just as she was told.

Selecting it, the game around her turned blue, a massive wall of text flashing in front of her.

She was able to read something about 'NullArgumentException' before it disappeared again, the world fading to darkness.

Realizing that her eyes were closed, Asuna opened them to see the pure white of the hospital ceiling.

 _-0-_

(The vast majority of players logged out through this method at the insistence of Argo, bar the skeptical minority)


	3. Chapter 3

**Videogame Dev 101**

 _ **If Kayaba had chosen the wrong game genre**_

 **By Goa1aso**

 _-0-_

'What is the capital of Argentina?'

Kirito stared blankly at the System prompt for a while unbelievingly, rubbing his eyes as if to make sure he was 'really seeing this shit', as Klein had so eloquently put it.

"Let me get this straight. Kayaba put _trivia_ into the game after beta?"

"Seems like it..."

Klein had just killed a boar after Kirito showed him how to use Sword Skills, but upon killing the boar, the System had prompted Klein to answer a trivia question in order to collect his loot.

"But why? This is such a bad idea, what was Kayaba on when he thought this was a good idea?"

"I dunno but this is seriously annoying. If I don't get this right, then I don't get loot…"

Selecting 'Buenos Aires' from the four options he was presented (Why would Mexico City even be in Argentina, Klein wondered), he proceeded to check the experience and gold he acquired from the kill.

Kirito shook his head in annoyance. "Well, I guess if all the trivia questions are this easy then we'll be fine, but it's still a hassle," he said with a heavy sigh.

 _-0-_

Walking dejectedly back to the little cottage, Little Nepenthes Flower in hand, Kirito really couldn't get over Coper's death. Why would he try to Monster PK him? It's just a quest item, and he'd offered to help get them both one!

The trivia question to receive the flower wasn't too bad ('How many hydrogens are in an atom of water?'), thankfully, so Kirito was at least grateful for that.

Turning the flower in to the woman to complete his quest, he received another quiz. Staring at the blinking cursor indicating manual input in disbelief, he sank to his knees in despair.

' _Rest in peace, Anneal Blade, you will never be wielded by anyone in the game.'_

'What is the exact number of islands that make up the country known as the Philippines? Please input below.'

 _-0-_

(The Rat's services were requested more than ever, calling upon her encyclopedic memory to answer mundane questions.)

(Argo was painted as a cheater due to the fact)

 _-0-_

 **The number was 7641 if you were curious.**

* * *

' _Oho, this sadistic bastard.'_

Kirito glared at the red-cowled apparition floating above the players that were forcibly assembled in the Beginner's Square. According to his beta-experience, this game was nigh-unclearable with this TRON-esque added rule. Like seriously, who would ever be able to complete a platformer in no deaths with an artificial time limit (aka your body emaciating in real-life)? Even deathless speed-runners of old games like Mario had countless hours of experience from playing the game regularly…

Around him, everyone else's faces paled, coming to the same realization that he'd just had.

No-one was going to make it out of this game.

 _-0-_

Kirito was getting tired of this. Jumping from pillar to pillar or floating islands to islands was getting extremely repetitive and, not to mention, dangerous. The last couple jumps on the current 54th floor had players running and jumping continuously. If you stopped between, you'd lose all of your momentum and be stuck with nowhere to go.

Such jumps were a large cause of the decline in the clearing force. The more cautious players had made it to the middle but stopped before jumping again, falling to their untimely deaths.

As a result of these widely-spaced platforms, no-one could feasibly build their character for tanking the various monsters that spawned on the larger islands. Tanks without agility and heavy gear would never be able to make it past the platforming parts of the game…

 _-0-_

If they thought that the 50th floor boss was bad, the 75th was even worse. It came in the form of a _giant_ _centipede_ made of _bones_ , its feet pre-programmed to land on the _tiny platforms_ littered across the _chasm_ of a boss area.

The fight went pretty much as anyone had expected, with half of the raid party dying to 'falling in midair' and another fourth of the party getting skewered where they stood by the _scythe-like_ legs of the boss.

A few more adventurous (and arguably smarter) individuals opted to jump _on top_ of the boss, hacking at it from above in relative safety. If you could call safety as _narrowly dodging random bone spikes being fired from the below them_. At least they wouldn't die to the rampaging legs.

 _-0-_

(The end statistics of the game had 90% of players dying from suicide. Missing a jump _was_ technically the player's fault)

(Doctors noticed that SAO players had the tendency to jump wherever they wanted to go, _with high precision might they add,_ in real life)

* * *

Kirito stifled a yawn, as he waited for his party _that Asuna forced him into_ to finish taking their turns.

' _You see, this is why I prefer to play solo…'_

When everyone _finally_ finished choosing their action and Sword Skill, they fired off their actions one by one at the monster who conveniently stood still for them to do whatever they needed to.

The light-armored random that Asuna had recruited chugged a potion, recovering a bit of the sliver that he called health. Then, the other random put up his shield in preparation _for an attack that would come after the other two player's actions_. Asuna used her trademark skill, Linear, dashing forward at the monster, attacking, and then returning back to her former position. That is, third in the line of four players standing next to each other.

Kirito groaned silently to himself, running forward to execute a Square sword skill before walking back to his 'position' slowly.

Upon his return, the monster ran _straight past the guy with a shield_ and attacked the guy who had drank a potion, turning him into a thousand polygons.

"You idiot! You forgot to use your taunt ability before shielding! Remember your ordering! It cost this guy his life!"

Kirito tuned out the sound of Asuna berating the other player. _'I hate this game so much.'_

 _-0-_

(The game took twice as long to complete due to all of the attack animations and other annoying, time consuming nuances of turn-based combat)

(Kirito couldn't even look at games like Final Fantasy without wanting to throw up in horror for years after the incident)

* * *

 **A/N: I guess I'll call this a series of one-shots so that I can add whatever ideas I come up with later. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it!**


End file.
